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Hits and Misses: Day of Caring, Amsterdam Dunes

8:10 p.m. CDT July 20, 2014

Sheboygan County purchased the 330-acre Amsterdam Dunes property in the Town of Holland to protect the unspoiled natural area and to create a wetland mitigation bank.(Photo: Janet Weyandt/Sheboygan Press Media )

Hit: We saw passionate feelings for and against Kohler Co.’s proposal to build an 18-hole golf course near the Black River on our site, our Facebook page and the pages of our newspaper this week. The Town of Wilson Plan Commission meeting was filled to overflowing last week to discuss the issue, with the largest turnout that Chairman Doug Fuller had seen during his tenure on the board. It is great to see people so engaged, and our wish is that this engagement would continue. It’s important for people to be involved in charting the course of our communities and not just when controversial issues are being decided.

Miss: Smoking, inhaling, injecting or ingesting methamphetamine is stupid. We’ve all seen the galleries of before and after photos of people who have the horrible toll of meth etched into their gaunt faces. Nyiaj Lee, a 26-year-old man, had to compound the stupidity of taking meth by driving after smoking the drug. How do we know that Lee was smoking meth? He admitted it after backing his car into a van at Kiwanis Park in Sheboygan. The car he was driving was so damaged, that he and his passenger had to be cut out of it. Lee should know that driving while intoxicated is stupid, seeing as he has two previous convictions from 2009 and 2010. The only bright spot in this otherwise sad story was that no one was injured in the van that he hit. Meth destroys lives, and fortunately in this case, Lee’s meth use didn’t destroy the lives of others.

Hit: After years of effort, we applaud the efforts by the Sheboygan County Board to purchase Amsterdam Dunes. It’s a smart move that not only allows for hundreds of acres of pristine, undeveloped land along the western shore of Lake Michigan to be preserved but also helps support economic development in other parts of the county through a wetland mitigation bank. The bank allows businesses in other parts of the county to offset the environmental impact of their expansion if it affects wetlands. Currently the county has to buy credits at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars elsewhere in the state. This smart environmental move was one of the reasons that the board received letters of support from Town of Holland, the Wisconsin DNR, the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation, the Sheboygan County Conservation Association and residents. We support the purchase and plan, too.